Nihilism
Yet by the Elizabethan period, the hold of the Great Chain was weakening—following writers like Machiavelli questioning that the universe was even ordered at all, and the spread of Copernican theory, which would have been known to educated Elizabethans, even if they were unwilling to upset the hierarchy of the world by insisting on its mass adoption. — Jason Louv, 2018 ... the dogmatic authority of the church weakens to the point that it can no longer wholly constrain philosophy within the mould of theology, violent disputes— antinomies—begin to flourish. Due to the ‘internecine strife of the metaphysicians’ polyglot forces begin to be sucked into conflict, at first mobilized against particular systems of reason, fighting under the banner of another. But eventually a more generalized antagonism begins to emerge, various elements begin to throw off the authority of metaphysics as such, scepticism spreads — Nick Land —» The first starts with Friedrich Schiller’s poem, Die Götter Griechenlands (The Gods of Greece), a poem written in the context of a controversy about pantheism. Did the scientific conception of nature entail Spinoza’s pantheism? Or even atheism? The metaphysical anxieties evoked by the question were just beginning to be expressed as the death of god, a phrase we today associate with Friedrich Nietzsche. It was Schiller that first expressed this idea in a grand historical narrative, one moving from ancient polytheism to monotheistic creationism to godless, autonomous nature. — Asprem 2018 —» Nihilism is skepticism that had lost its patience. — Heremite, 2019 —» What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. . . . For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end. . . . — «Will to Power», 1888 Nihilism is a state of meaninglessness, in that it refers to a view of things "as being inherently meaningles'''s". The term was coined to refer to the meaninglessness that a rationality divorced from the tradition of theology brought on: that the traditional view of man, which was theological, had no inherent meaning at least in the sense that there was no inherent reason to believe it had more significant meaning than any other view. Nihilism is thus an anarchism, since it does not recognise or valorise any hierarchy in itself or as inherent to anything. Since nihilism does not valorise any hierarchy in itself, or even necessarily recognise as significant any hierarchy, it certainly does not valorise the hierarchy of ideas posited by religion, such as the idea that reality is theistic, or that there is a God at the top of that hierarchy, or that there are values, virtues, and sins, that are inherent to the economy of a god in the manifested world or beyond it. Nihilism is thus unavoidably an atheism: an extreme skepticism of theism or theology, if not also a trying of an extreme skepticism towards post-theistic and post-theological ideas about the worth and destiny of Man. However, since the space that nihilism came to prominence in was still relatively theological, in that it can't to some degree but use post-theological or theologically derived language, nihilism has never attained a state of absolute purity, or complete anarchy. In fact, you see nihilists, wittingly or not, at any given time using concepts of theological referentiality. No way of thought is "complete" anarchy, since thought depends on order to even be thought and not just "complete" chaos (whatever that is), but nihilism is still definitely a very far gone anarchy of ideas. Although communism, fascism and liberalism are relatively nihilistic—and even though it can be argued that straight up nihilism goes further than they—it is still so, that, ''because nihilism unavoidably to some degree, as a way of thinking, inherits theological or theologically derived concepts: ''nihilism hasn't escaped the status of being a "secular religion". Arguably, nihilism makes the most valiant attempt. Rhizomata * Notable works: «Faster, daddy: A tale on N Accelerationisms». * Anti-nihilists: Jacobi; Nietzsche; Evola, Guénon, Steiner; Popper; * Nihilists: K. Jasper * See conversely to nihilism: The Great Chain of Being * A corresponding corruption: Fideism. * '''See also: Nihilism & Modernism, Atheism, Existentialism, Post-Nihilism. * Tagged: Autonomy, Übermensch, Christianity, Ethics, Existential Nihilism, God, Inner Autonomy, Matt Dillahunty, Metaphysics, Moral Engineering, Moral Ingenuity, Moral Nihilism, Morality, Pessimism, Philosophy, Post-Nihilism, Religion, Secular Morality, The Atheist Experience, Transvaluation of Values, Values, Will to Power, Works of Heart * Nihilism and the valorisation of Capitalism * Nihilism and Democracy; Nihilist Communism